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      Breaking the silence : stories of parteras empíricas in Nicaragua

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      Date
      2010-04-18
      Author
      Mark, Amy
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
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      Abstract
      This master’s thesis presents the stories of Doña Eugdocia and Doña Carmen: two parteras empíricas living and working in the area of Estelí, Nicaragua. The stories were constructed from interviews with the parteras empíricas and are influenced by testimonial life history research methods. The stories, complemented by interviews with Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) trainers, locally available training manuals, and interviews with other parteras empíricas function as a counter-narrative to global (TBA) discourse revealing the important but little understood contributions these women make to their respective communities and health care systems. The stories demonstrate important parallels between the parteras empíricas’ narrowing role in Nicaragua and global TBA discourse regarding their practices. The stories also dispel the notion of the “traditional” as signifying incapable of change. Instead, considering the parteras empíricas story within a postcolonial framework using Jordan’s (an anthropologist) conceptualization of “authoritative knowledge” demonstrates that the parteras empíricas positioning of biomedicine as authoritative is a survival mechanism and not a devaluation of their own epistemological orientations.
      Degree
      Master of Science (M.Sc.)
      Department
      Community Health and Epidemiology
      Program
      Community Health and Epidemiology
      Supervisor
      Hanson, Lori
      Committee
      Dickson, Gerri; Abonyi, Sylvia
      Copyright Date
      April 2010
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-05162010-203319
      Subject
      traditional birth attendant
      Nicaragua
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      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
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